Reblogged from The Silent Eye:
Part Four of The Unseen Sea: adrift in the enneagram
I am not equating LUCA’s enduring sense of self-protection with our own consciousness as a living, brain-possessing being, with all its complexity of feeling, thought and emotion. But anyone drawing a line between the two would, in my opinion, be correct.
The ascent of the separated and self-determining cell created the entire future of the tree of biological life – and the consciousness that emerged as it evolved.
The idea of ’emergence’ as a separate branch of science is now well established. It developed shortly after that of Chaos Theory, which showed us the anti-intuitive truth about how life becomes more sophisticated with time, and takes evolutionary leaps ‘far from equilibrium’.
Emergence consists of a set of behaviours that arise when ‘lower level’ entities work together. The ’emergent’ behaviours look, and may be, in their own ways, intelligent.
An example of an emergent behaviour is the way a flock of migrating birds are able to navigate and move as a single unit. The birds lose none of their individuality, but are strengthened by the unity within the group.
Sue Vincent's Daily Echo 